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So much better

As hard as I’ve tried to be positive and upbeat, the week following my surgery has not been easy. Luckily, I have not had a lot of pain. What I have had, is extremely exhaustion. Because it was such a minor surgery, when I realized I was not in a lot of pain, I assumed that after a day or two I would feel like myself, and be doing great. I was quite eager for that, because I know in the next few weeks I will start some sort of treatment, and I want to enjoy my life as much as possible until then! Hopefully I will tolerate treatment well, but if I don’t, I don’t want to lose out on a minute of time when I’m feeling good.

I’ve never had surgery before, I had no idea just how horrible I would feel, for the whole week afterwards. Every day I would wake up a bit foggy thinking maybe I would feel OK after I had breakfast, and then I would, for about 10 minutes! All day, after 10 to 20 minutes of activity, I would usually need another hour or two to just sit on the couch and do nothing and recover, because I would have a pounding headache and be nauseous and queasy and be literally unable to hold my head up. Maybe it’s normal to feel like this for six days after surgery, but because I’ve never had surgery, it was certainly discouraging to me! I hadn’t anticipated it and of course my mind went on overdrive and I started to wonder if I would feel like this for weeks and months, because it didn’t seem to be improving between Saturday and Thursday! What if I had to take even longer off work than the two weeks I had planned?

Yesterday I was out of the house all day, taking care of different things. Even though I probably seemed OK to the people I saw, I actually felt horrible most of that time and was just glad I had lots of opportunities to set. In spite of that, things just kept turning up and I stayed on my feet a lot too, finally getting back to 10,000 steps on my fit-bit. By dinner time, I was feeling weirdly good and hoping it would last.

I’m so glad it has! I woke up this morning with no fog in my head and it is 3 PM and I’m still feeling good. I’ve been on my feet doing stuff around the house and the mall, without problem.

I met Adam for lunch at a new Thai place between our home and his work, we’ve been wanting to check it out for a while and I’m glad we did! It was awesome! I also got all my Chanukah shopping done, had an emergency eye-brow intervention, and did about half the groceries!

So, I spoke to the surgeon and made arrangements to return to work on Monday. I’m so happy! I love my job and I miss it when I’m not doing it. I said it a few weeks ago, but I will say it again. I’m so lucky to have a job I love! I feel the work I do is important and meaningful, and I love the people I work with. I think that so important, because it’s where I go every day! I’m also happy because I know that my sick days are sort of precious right now, I certainly don’t want to use them if I don’t have to.

In other stuff, I stopped by my hairdresser yesterday to book a haircut, I figure if I need chemo I will be glad to have my hair shorter, and even if not, a cut would be nice! I grew my hair a lot longer than I like to for the Bat Mitzvah, and I wasn’t really happy with it anymore (long hair is lovely, but mine gets stringy and frizzy after a certain length. I can grow it longer curly then straight, but there is still a limit!). She had time to do it on the spot, so I went for it. Here’s a selfie I took of the restaurant today, I’m very happy with it!

So, I guess I’m through the worst of my surgery recovery, and on my way back to work! I’m looking forward to a fun weekend, even though we don’t have much planned.

Step one in my journey to the other side of cancer is mostly done! Stay tuned for the next ones.